“She Can’t Understand Us,” They Laughed — Then the Duke’s Bride Silenced Them in Fluent Italian
Chapter 11
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I think you have been asking me that since our first winter, in between your moves, and I think you have been afraid of the answer.So here it is: I buried men for my father who had done worse than you. And my father told every one of them the same thing at the end: 'You are not the worst hour of your life. You are also the man who carried his sergeant back down the ladder.' You told me that part too, though you pretended it did not matter. It matters.Write to me when you cannot sleep. I will always answer. I play badly when I am tired, but I will always answer.It was signed, as all of them were signed: T. Carew.He had written to T. Carew about Badajoz. He had written about the breach, and the ladders, and the night after, and what the men had done in the town, and what he had not been able to stop. He had never said a word of it to a living soul. He had not said it to his own mother before she died. He had said it to a stranger with violet ink, who played the most beautiful, reckless, generous chess he had ever seen, and who opened every game by giving away a pawn on the fourth move.He had pictured T. Carew as an old man—a retired chaplain, perhaps, with a pipe, spectacles, and a garden.He looked at the violet ink. He saw two fingers on the edge of a chessboard, stained dark violet in the creases. He heard a low voice say, "I am one, Your Grace."The Duke stood up so fast that the brandy went over. "Gallagher!"The sergeant was there in a moment, as if he had been waiting outside the door. Perhaps he had."The companion," said the Duke. "What is her name?""Her old name?" Gallagher had no need to ask anyone. "I had it from the housekeeper an hour since, sir. Carew. Miss Thomasina Carew. Her father was the parson at the garrison chapel in Chatham."The Duke closed his eyes. "She knew," he said. "At the table. She knew it was me.""I'd say so. When you went white, she saw it.""And I called it luck at supper in front of them all. I sat there and let that woman throw her out of the house, and I ate my beef." He opened his eyes. "Where is she?""Gone, sir. The gig took her down to the crossroads a quarter of an hour ago. The night mail comes through at two.""Then I have time.""The mail was early tonight. The guard wanted to be over the heath before the drifts got deep. It's gone, sir. I heard the horn from the stable."For a moment, the Duke stood quite still.Then the library door opened again, and Count Belsky stood there in a dressing gown of dark sable, his white hair on end, looking every one of his sixty years.